“You have not considered me at all.”

“The day will come when you will not say that,” he answered, looking at her fixedly, then turning away with abruptness.  “We must name our new friend,” he added.  “Suppose we call him Banquo’s ghost?  Banquo’s ghost, you remember, existed to only one person.  Did you ever see him on the stage?  You must, some day in London.  He rises up in solemn majesty from a secret trap door, and overwhelms Mac—­Well! here’s the trap door.”  And he touched the slashed tapestry with his finger.  “Shall I tell you why I call him so?” he went on, coming close to her as if about to whisper some secret.

“No,” she said, drawing back.  “If you know any secrets belonging to this family, I don’t want to hear them.  You will be obliged to apologize to the Colonel for defacing his wall, and whatever explanation you have to give, will be given to him.”

Edmonson watched her with a smile.

“Do you know,” he said, “that you have an exaggerated conscience?  But you have the faculty of making it seem charming.  As you please, then.  I will give my explanation to the Colonel as soon as he is ready for it—­as soon, and even before.  Shall we go into the garden again until somebody comes?”

Elizabeth did not answer immediately.  She stopped on the threshold where she had been standing and looked at the speaker with an expression he could not read.  She had thought well of this young man.  Was it going to be that she could no longer believe in him?  She did not care so much for that in itself, but it seemed as if all the world in which she had moved, the ideal world founded on beauty and nobleness, even if, indeed, one cornerstone of it were pain, had fallen to pieces about her.  Among so many ruins the ruin of another ideal would not be so very much, but it would give more pain than was due to itself.  As she looked up at him Edmonson’s face lost its exultation.  “Perhaps I am mistaken; I ought to hear before I judge,” she thought.

“I would rather stay here,” she said at last.  “There are footsteps now—­it is Master Archdale.”  She thought as she spoke that the girlish figure walking beside him was Katie’s, but when the two came nearer she saw that it was not his cousin to whom Stephen was talking so merrily, but another of his mother’s guests.  Katie was in the distance with Kenelm Waldo.  Bulchester had disappeared for the moment—­no, he was with Madam Archdale.  As these and others sauntered up to the hall, Edmonson partially closing the opening by pushing the tapestry behind the antlers, retreated, and occupied himself with an examination of these long branches that like a personal weapon had divided the thick underbrush of his way before him.  It was not until most of the party were in the hall, not until the Colonel had come in with Madam Pepperell, that he suddenly went forward and drew down the cut tapestry, and at the moment put himself into the same attitude with the man in the picture, and in this attitude stood with his eyes glancing keenly from one to another of the spectators.